I imagine that it’d feel terribly awkward to beSurvarium. Yes, there are the obvious reasons – having such a silly nametag chained to your chest can’t be fun; also, existing as the first sentient videogame or whatever – but imagine all the guilt. Survarium isn’t STALKER 2 and it never will be, but longtime fans can’t let go that easily. Survarium-You would walk into rooms, and people’s eyes would narrow into disdainful slits. “You’re not your parents’ son, you… you… imposter,” they’d say through clenched teeth, revulsion quivering in their eyes. “But, that said, the more reasonable among us do think you still seem fairly nice on your own merits – especially in terms of environment design and world lore. We sincerely wish you all the best. Keep on keeping on and all that.”

“You abomination.”

Where was I going with all of that? Oh yes, Lamentably Not STALKER 2– I mean Survarium is getting a slew of updates that aim to make it even more STALKER-like in nature. In the near-term, that means two new locations – the nature-overrun Tarakanovsky Fort and oppressively imposing Mamayev Kurgan – and more anomalies in all levels.

Still in the experimental phase, meanwhile, are random anomalies, artifacts (which would provide a reason to venture into anomalies instead of simply skirting around them), an economy, and a full-blown quest system. The latter, especially, will hopefully put some single-player/co-op-ish adventure-y flair back into what is, for now, a fairly standard multiplayer shooter.

But I will not rest until I get my acoustic-guitar-strumming campfire men.

Survarium will be entering closed beta very soon, and Vostok is apparently ramping up its invite program accordingly. For now, though, you can always press keys and click your mouse while this video plays. It’s (almost) exactly like the real thing! Only, you know, minus all the player agency and with more of your targets suddenly morphing into extremely chatty Russian game developers.

Give them some time and don’t be a Thorn in their side. Sure, the hype around Survarium might just be a Bubble, but then again we might reach the Heart of the Oasis in a desert of dreadful manshooters.

Oh, they weren’t that bad you unique little Snowflake. It’s not as if you Moonlight as a pun professor or anything, you basically just Wrenched those out of thin air which is pretty impressive–I think I’ve seen a couple of them before, but to be honest I have the memory of a Goldfish! Stuff just falls out of my mind like Droplets through a sieve.

At the end of the day, you have the Freedom–nay, the Duty to insert puns wherever you can. There’s not some Monolith of rules written anywhere, nor a Compass to point to which puns are good and bad. You just have to keep your head up, come out of your Shell and blossom into a Stone Flower; don’t listen to all the Slugs and Slimes out there!

Anyways, I’ve had far too much Fruit Punch. I just tried to turn my Mama’s Beads into a Fireball and now my face smells like Burnt Fuzz. Time for this Night Star to catch some Z’s under the Moonlight.

Hrm, if you wait until you get to the programmer heading the netcode and network infrastructure, you begin to hear some really bad things. Ironically, he begins his explanation by pondering why popular FPS titles don’t use their very ‘obvious’ netcode methodology. Well, for starters, ancient netcode used to work this way, but it’s really inefficient and causes all sorts of problems. That’s why we have timed snapshots and reverse lookup from the server based on latency and weighted by client information. It’s funny, because in the programmer’s explanation, he essentially reveals all the issues they have with their ‘obvious’ system and thus the reason current netcode exists. I’m all for fresher netcode, more frequent snapshots, and tighter reverse lookup algorithms, but what this guy is describing is the antithesis of that.